Are We Idiots? The Simulacra of Jean Baudrillard

By: Boris Kriger

Narrated by: Daniel Byshenk

This book is not here to comfort you. It does not promise hope, progress, or some tender reassurance about the nobility of the human project. It will not tell you that everything happens for a reason, or that there is meaning to be found in our collective struggle. Instead, it stands firmly within the logic of Jean Baudrillard’s simulacra—a philosophy that does not seek to reveal a hidden truth, but to diagnose the condition of our reality.

We no longer live in the world; we live within our own perception of it. We no longer think about things themselves, but about their reflections—about the shimmering images projected onto the walls of our minds. We do not feel because something happens; we feel because feeling is what we’ve been programmed to do. And none of this is a tragedy, nor a moral failure. It is simply the architecture of consciousness—the way our experience has been built, layer upon layer of illusion.

“Are We Idiots?” is not an insult. It isn’t mockery or cynicism disguised as insight. It is a question meant to stir something that has long been numbed by the ceaseless simulation of life. It asks whether we can still feel the pulse of the real beneath the screens, symbols, and stories we endlessly reproduce.

This is a book about our time—about the ways we think, consume, and replicate meaning until it collapses into imitation. It is about our extraordinary talent for creating copies so convincing that we forget there was ever an original.

And if, after listening, you find yourself not outraged but strangely calm—if a faint, unsettling clarity lingers instead of anger—then the book has done what it was meant to do.

©2025 Boris Kriger (P)2025 Boris Kriger